苏州大学外国语学院成教本科毕业论文
（2013届夜大学）
题目：On t he Art and Morality of Wilde’s Works
探究王尔德作品中的艺术和道德专业：英语
姓名：李玉洁
指导教师：
提交日期： 2013年10月
Acknowledgements
There are a lot of people who of this thesis. and I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to extend my deep gratitude to them.
Firstly, I want to express my , who lots of intellectual guidance and moving encouragement in my three-year study at Soochow University, in particular whose strong support of my thesis topic me great confidence to continue my writing.
Secondly, I would like to thank my classmates for their unfailing support and patience in answering my questions in the interviews during my thesis writing.
Finally, I am also much obliged to my family members, without their support and encouragement, my completion of this thesis would not possible.
Abstract
Oscar Wilde, one of the most important writers of Irish literature, as well as the English literature. He was an advocator of artistic aestheticism, insisting that it was life and nature that imitated art, not art imitated life and nature; art should not be restrained by morality.
Wilde presented multiple images in Gray and demonstrated the fairy tales, reality. Wilde applied the paradox in Wilde’s works. Firstly, this paper introduced the study on morality of previous literary works. Then, it elaborated the artistic theories of Oscar Wilde, and explored the concealed morality of ideal and reality, between art and morality, Wilde’s individual of contradictions who bled upon the thorns of life and in the end a martyred artist.
Key words: Oscar Wilde; art and morality; contradictions
摘要
奥斯卡·王尔德是爱尔兰文学史和英国文学史上最重要的作家之一。他是一位艺术唯美主义的倡导者，坚持认为是生活和自然模仿艺术，而不是艺术模仿生活和自然，艺术不应受到道德的束缚。
王尔德在他唯一的小说《道林格雷的画像》中展示了多种多样的人物形象，并通过这些人物间的矛盾冲突阐释了多重面具遮掩下的奥斯卡本人。在童话故事中，他创造了一个与现实脱离并远离世事的理想王国。然而，王尔德的童话故事并没有遗弃现实。在戏剧中，他运用矛盾表达法充分地表达了他的想法和观点。
本文对王尔德的作品中的艺术与道德感进行了详细分析。首先介绍了先前作品对道德感的不同研究。然后详尽阐述了王尔德的艺术理论并从他有代表性的作品中选取小说为例对隐藏在其中的道德感进行探究。最后发现，王尔德的作品一直就是艺术与道德感共同存在着，只是通常被忽略了。在理想与现实的十字路口，在唯美与道德之间，王尔德的爱恨与追求使他自己成为一个充满矛盾的个体。他在人生的荆棘路上流着血，最终成为艺术的殉道者。
关键词: 奥斯卡·王尔德；艺术与道德；矛盾
Contents
Introduction (1)
Chapter 1 Morality of Literary Works (3)
Chapter 2 Art and Morality of Wilde’s Works (5)
2.1 Wilde’s Artistic Theories (5)
2.1.1 Theory of “Art for Art’s Sake” (5)
2.1.2 Theory of “Life Imitating Art” (6)
2.1.3 Contradictions Revealed in Advocating the Self-Contained Art (8)
2.2 Morality Concealed in the Novel (9)
2.2.1 Unity of “Body and Soul” (9)
2.2.2 Morality in the Aesthetic Art (10)
Chapter 3 Relationship Between Art and Morality (13)
Chapter 4 Contradictions in Wilde’s Literary Practice (16)
4.1 Contradictions in the Fairy Tales (16)
4.2 Wilde’s Paradox (16)
Chapter 5 Conclusion (17)
Introduction
The full name of Oscar Wilde is Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854—1900). He was born in Ireland, well known as a playwright, novelist, essayist and poet. In the early age, salon, and turned out an excellent literary talk. After being educated in Trinity College, Dublin, College, Oxford, where the Newdigate Prize for English Verse; Classics in spite of a reputation for idleness. At Oxford, the aesthetic innovators such as English writers Walter Pater and John Ruskin 1881, Oscar Wilde published of Poems. One year later, Wilde went to New York for a successful lecture tour, then returning to England London and married a wealthy Irish woman. Later, they Gray (1891). Ultimately, of comedies, beginning with Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), and following up with A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband(1895). His most characteristic play, The Importance of Being Earnest(also 1895) was proved the most successful. Few comedies of the English stage in French. It was banned in England and was first seen privately in London until 1905 .Wilde also left an unfinished one-act play, A Florentine Tragedy which was later completed by Sturge Moore and was produced in London in 1906.
Lo ndon witnessed Oscar Wilde’s tragic downfall at the peak of 1895. He was accused of prison. During the two years, in 1897 and spent the rest of Paris, using a pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. Later, Wilde died of meningitis in Paris on November 30, 1900.
As ZhaoLi and Xu Jing’an the book Aestheticism, published by
People’s University Press in 1988, Wilde’s artistic theories mainly consist of three aspects: First, art should be separated from life in that beauty is second to nothing and life is second to art; the beauty and value of art do not exist in life and nature. In writing, beautiful yet untrue stories, namely “lying” works should be advocated.Second, art itself is but the object in that art independent life and value, being obligated to nothing. Only the beauty of form in art is worth seeking after. Third, art is prior to life in that life imitates art rather than life being reflected by art.
Based on a general reading of Wilde’s all types of literary works, deep understanding of them.
Chapter 1 Morality of Literary Works
No one could be free from moral whether to be against it or to be in coherence with it. All the works and their authors were endowed with morality, though it was not always in consistence with the dominant. To be completely objective and non-moral was impossible. The works at least through the selection and arrangement of materials, as David Masson pointed out that the value judgment of crimes, but the long literature, spiritual function of literary was dominated. As early as in the earliest Greek mythology, there the moral message. Plato banished the poets from the Republic, because the poetry did not moralize. Aristotle discoursed at great length on the validity of Greek tragedy by arguing that the tragedy aroused emotional tumult in the audiences’ fact most of the great Greek tragedies explored ethnic problems. In the long period of the religious Mediation, religion was the exclusive subject of literary and the
only criterion. In the Renaissance period the writers spared no effort to establish the new moral standard that adapted to the developing bourgeoisie society. Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare or other great writers, all quested for a grander moral theme: the social morality. Sir Philip Sydney, the great English critic, in and its value based on what was communicated. The world of the poem was a better world than the real one and was presented in such a way that the readers were stimulated to try and imitate it in their own practice. When it came to the 19th century, the moral awareness was wider and deeper. Balzac, the great French novelist, in the light of morality. Charles Dickens tried so that combined in their works. The writers of the modern genres also showed their speculation on morality, though they didn’t always sustain the predominant one. And their moral anxiety was shown in a more diverting way.
Chapter 2 Art and Morality of Wilde’s Works
2.1. Wilde’s Artistic Theories
2.1.1. Theory of “Art for Art’s Sake”
During the late nineteenth century, the industrial revolution undermined the three main corners of the Victorian society (namely religion, family and duty) without offering ready-made alternatives. Social skepticism grew, the Victorian morality was under pressure. When the central governing standards of the Victorian society were challenged by the first economic crisis and by social reformers like the Fabians, the avant-garde of artists and intellectuals like Oscar Wilde were forced to realize the bankruptcy of the old values.
Since the materialist values of the middle-class could not satisfy Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the reflection[s] in dark waters…it cannot be questioned. It 22). Wilde non-utilitarian art, claiming:
The only beautiful things are the things that do
not concern us. As long as a thing is useful or
necessary to us, or affects us in any way, either for
pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to our
sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in
which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art
(Wilde 1997, 16).
Therefore, “Art never , nothing that is debatable,nothing about which men argue” (赵武平16). Wilde argued for the separation of life and art and claimed that literary realism violated this first law of aesthetics, whereas romance reverently obeyed it. He set art and life in irreconcilable conflict and denied that literature needed in any way to be responsible to life.
Wilde’s such claim that art did not adhere to life but being independent became a rebellion against the reality and life. Nonetheless, from time to time, Oscar Wilde would keep aloof from the ivory tower of the “beauty” to boldly expose and sharply criticize the ugliness and darkness of the reality and life. He even wrote a prose of “The Soul of Man unde r Socialism” in 1891 though revealed that such an artist who wrote such kind of article would never be ignorant of life or reality at all, so the art that propagating should not be absolutely non-utilitarian.
Furthermore, Wilde’s literary creation could never be outside of the reality of life, from not even considered the most far away from the real life. Fairy tales need not abandon reality in order to satisfy man’s psychological developments needs and desires. On the contrary, they should reflect essential and conditions of man’s existence (Cohen 77). For instance, in a letter Wilde connected the relationship between fairy tales and reality with that between literary modes of realism and romance: “The story ‘The Happy Prince’ is an attempt to treat a tragic modern problem in a form that aims at delicacy and imaginative treatment: it is a reaction against the purely imitative character of modern art”(Cohen 79). In another letter Wilde claimed the stories in The Happy Prince and Other Tales were an attempt to mirror modern life in a form remote from reality---to deal with modern problems in a mode that was ideal and not imitative(Cohen 78).
It can be concluded that by advocating the theory of “art for art’s sake,” Wilde believed in the non-utilitarianism of art, contradictorily, to save the society.
2.1.2. Theory of “Life Imitating Art”
In spite of arguing for separation of art and life and doctrine of “art for art’s sake,” Oscar Wilde further developed art imitates life”(Wilde 1997, 38). He further il lustrated: “life fact what dreamed in fiction”(Wilde 1997, 38). Still, “nature, no less than life, is an imitation of art…Things are because we see them, and what we see, and the arts that form while life might destroy it.
Wilde recognized art relationship between art and life, and cut off
art from its source, namely life, through . Provided life imitated art, art should overpass life, while life should also be artistic to achieve self-surpassing. Trying to guide life with art was somewhat a utopian illusion. However, as Wilde philosophically asserted, a map of the world that did not include Utopia was not worth even glancing at; and progress was the realization of Utopias.
This standpoint of Wilde’s reflected that the
unsophisticatedness and independence, and
emphasized art’s function and surpassing
attributes. In the meantime, bondage and limit
in subject matter and method for expression. No
matter what, Wilde did not always abide by
them. After all, denial or ignorance of life as
sources of art would reality itself, and of loftier
and more noble import (Wilde 1997, 193).
No artist could avoid being influenced by the real world , nor could Wilde. His literary practice best proved that art could reflect the real life, such as social life in the tragicomedies.
2.1.
3. Contradictions Revealed in Advocating the Self-Contained Art
Taking the above two doctrines together, it may be found out that they are contradictory to each other, in that the theory of “life imitating art” can not match the doctrine o f “art for art’s sake,” because the latter advocates pure non-utilitarianism which the former cannot achieve. Further inspecting, “art for art’s sake” was the slogan of Aestheticism in the 19th century, often given in its French form as l’art pour l’art. It is an
appeal to emotion as well as to mind. Time after time, when artists or another, and end in itself. When asked what art is good for, in the sense of what utility it its own terms. In other words, art is self-sufficient and need serve no moral or political or any other purpose. In addition, from the perspective of New Criticism, the meaning of the art must not be equated with its artist’s feelings or stated or implied intentions according to the objective theory of art. Oscar Wilde, as a devotee to pure beauty, adopted the slogan of “art for art’s sake” in art being self-sufficient. Literature as art, in Oscar Wilde’s eyes, was perfect expression of life. He , did not, as it were, purify it for us, and give to it a momentary perfection” (Wilde 1997, 101). This point of view was quite similar to , in that it indirectly indicated that one object or function of art was to purify the world with beauty, or to create beauty so that life could imitate.
Wilde insisted that art would express nothing but art itself; and it was a self-contained entity. It was nothing to do with art when life was attracted by art and tried to imitate art. What that case, a balance might be achieved between Wilde’s these two doctrines of life and art, yet the contradictions within them still inevitably existed.
2.2. Morality Concealed in the Novel
2.2.1. Unity of “Body and Soul”
It was no doubt that the fanatical pursuit of beauty and the praise of the eternal value of arts in The Picture of Dorian Gray were the visualizatio n of Wilde’s concept of aesthetic theory. By the mouth of the artist, Oscar Wilde said: “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the
occasion. It is not the colored canvas, reveals I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I in it the secret of my own soul” (Wilde 2001, 8). This showed that, in aesthetic writer Oscar Wilde’s eye,beauty existed only in the depths of people’s feelings, and writer should call for and pursue this kind of beauty, to make it become the supreme. The novel criticized the so-called noble ethics in the British upper-class with a keen-eyed pen, at the same time the author implied Gray described a symbolic and somewhat absurd story. The beautiful lad Dorian advocate of society, respected all kinds of formal beauty, thought that beauty to persuade people not to restrain themselves and not be bound by indulge themselves in pursuing their sensual desire; the other was Basil Hallward, a genius painter in pursuit of beauty as the supreme artistic objective. He was exactly the opposite of Lord Henry, for artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of life into them”(Wilde 2001, 12). His perseverant dedication to the artistic pursuit absolutely wonderful portrait that made Dorian see beauty. Unfortunately, the merciless days would eventually kill beauty. Dorian at this moment wished to use soul as an exchange for the beauty of youth: “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”(Wilde 2001, 24) Unexpectedly, what Dorian said of “Body and Soul”ultimately fulfilled. Driven by Henry’s thinking of began the pursuit of a life of so-called “beauty” but actually degeneration, to do whatever after sensory stimulation everywhere, even to crime. Particularly, after seeing that ’s degradation became worse and
worse. Ironically, unusual changes place on the picture, which was aging gradually by all the immoral mark in ’s pursuit of act of degeneration, but from the aesthetic point of view, what element of evil. However, as an “aesthetic man”,the Aesthetic Art
Obviously, it was impossible for Wilde’s aesthetic art to be independent by breaking away from the social ethics of the time. On the contrary, the concern about ethics was still in the novel: people always the native land of the man moving through History, surrendered! And to such little purpose! There mad willful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they ’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a great deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely---or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its who moralises is usually a who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience (Wilde 2000, 201).
Oscar Wilde attempted to rebel against all the bourgeois morality by aestheticism. He once said: “An artist, artistic effect can be produced, and fact, ; the improvement of living standards was accompanied by poverty and degradation. People felt extremely lost and confused. In a society in which material was omnipotent, the depth, especially -utilitarian art”.
As a matter of fact, the , and to enjoy life both in terms of quality and
quantity as much as possible. This was not only a physical sensory pleasure, but also a spiritual pursuit. Starting from the romance experiences for the first time in London, to the meeting with the actress Sibyl who played the role of Juliet, Dorian was actually running after physical and sensual pleasures. After the discovery of the absolutely sacred and perfect Sibyl, everything changed. Dorian was pursuing a spiritual enjoyment. He even thought that could not accept Sibyl’s false acting, and angrily left the seat and abandoned committed suicide due to the indignation. The pursuit of art could not escape the reality of life.
“Art for art’s sake”, the most well-known slogan for aestheticism campaign, included such contents as the independence of arts, the non-utilitarian nature of art, the separation of art and life, etc. Wilde of “art for art’s sake”, and immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all” (Wilde 2001, 3). In Wilde’s works, it could be seen that it was not Oscar Wilde’s intention to abandon conscience, but to advocate a the air. It could be said the three main characters in the novel, Basil, Henry and Dorian, were a true portrayal of the author’s moral ideals: Lord Henry called for for art and the pursuit of pure art were exactly the moral footnote of altruism; and Dorian Gray swung between the two, both
influenced by Art and Morality
The relationship between art and morality revealed the contradictions between Wilde’s artistic theories and literary practice. On one the other , it is necessary to take a look at the social background in pr obing into the morality reflected in Wilde’s literary practice.
Before the 1850s, puritan moral values dominating in England
Puritan moral values primarily emphasized the , the accumulation of wealth and social climb through self- time, in fact, was still under the omnipresent influence of puritan moral values. Its inhumanity, monotony, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband, Jack and Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, etc…Wildean dandies understood that the aristocratic society of the ancient regime, with its values of replaced by the base world of capitalism and industrial progress, a world in which “getting rich” could be an electoral slogan. They, the face of naked materialism, they sought to recreate those values, single- benefit. They did so through style. In contrast to the frugal society in which they found themselves, they indulged in extravagance and conspicuous consumption. They dissociated themselves from that society in other respects: through their impractical emphasis upon elegance and the poetry of appearance, through their cult of artificiality, and through their supreme and unshakeable impassivity. Wildean dandies of those dandies, Wilde satirized the once addressed in Lady Windermere’s Fan: “Nowadays so many conceited people go about Society pretending to be good, that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad”(Wilde 2000, 9). These tragic-comedies also unmasked some aristocrats’ bad deeds, such as their seducing women first yet abandoning them later (e.g. Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance), and getting rich through black deal (e.g. Chiltern in An Ideal Husband). These works full of moral themes not only disclosed the selfishness and greed of the Bourgeois of the time, but also reflected the reality of the Victorian society.
It should be noted that Wildean dandies advocated Wildean aesthetic morality, namely, the amorality, which most vividly reflected in Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.The protagonist Lord Henry Wotton always showed off with adored and worshiped by another protagonist Dorian Gray. As a result, Dorian Gray began to seek for new sensations and passions with regard to nothing else. The portrait embodied precisely the normative standard, which unimpeachable moral arbiter; “the visible emblem of conscience,” expressing on the surface of the canvas the truth of Dorian’s sinful, degenerate life. While Dorian went about the world looking youthful and innocent, the picture unsparingly recorded the physical impact of Dorian imagined that not seducing a peasant girl who loved that “through vanity the mask of goodness. For curiosity’s sake 192). Disgusted by what 192), Dorian decided to get rid of the painting. The result was a novelistic ending that stabbing the picture, Dorian killed life and representation returned to “normal”---that was the picture reverted to its original youthful appearance and the dead man was revealed to be “withered, wri nkled, and loathsome of visage”(Ellmann 193). From taking the seduction of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray slowly went to , along with which from this novel that seeking for beauty without concerning to the morality must result in final devastation, so it the case of Dorian Gray.
Therefore, Wilde theoretically protested that art did not concern either reality or morality, but Wilde’s Literary Practice.
4.1. Contradictions in the Fairy Tales
As a writer of fairy tales, Wilde and His Soul”, and “The
Star-Child” brought together to form A House of Pomegranates. In , there were animals and objects that would talk and reality. Yet reality Wilde did not recapture of clarity and wonder. Through fairy tales, a writer could either escape the condition or confront the problems. Wilde endorsed both.
4.2 Wilde’s Paradox
By definition, paradox is “an apparently self-contradictory (even absurd) statement which, on closer inspection, is found to contain opposites” (Cuddon 634). Throughout literary works of different ages and of different genres, paradox adored and manipulated by different writers, among whom Wilde is one of the notable figures. Many critics Wilde in exploring the application of paradox. For instance, George Woodcock’s The Paradox of Oscar Wilde published in 1950 would be a rather old but typical case, the title of which suggests an unmistakable stress on paradox. Indeed, for Wilde, paradox not only marks artist. No other word than “paradoxical” can be more suitable to summarize Wilde’s works as well as life.
Chapter 5 Conclusion
Oscar Wilde of art from life and denied the existence of the beauty and value of the art. Therefore, writing. He independent subject to anything else, so that art was a self-contained entity. Thus the formal beauty of art should be worth seeking for. In addition, Wilde insisted that art was prior to life in that life would imitate art rather than life being reflected by art. However, of spite of this, necessary and significant in the correct understanding and evaluation of Wilde and the pursuit of